I was flipping through the weekly Wal-Mart flyer that came in the mail yesterday, and noticed something different- it contained a “green” section with great eco-friendly products and lots of facts. Pretty strange, coming from a company like Wal-Mart, but I guess they’re trying to improve their image by jumping on the “Save The Earth” bandwagon. Anyway, one of these green products was a T-shirt made of plastic from recycled 2-liter soda bottles. How innovative! I’d never seen this before. Then I realized they’re made by Coca-Cola. So I did a little research, and apparently a lot of places are now recycling soda and water bottles (PET plastics) into clothing items. Coke is emerging as a leader in this area, attracting attention and awards by pledging a goal of “complete sustainability and recyclability” of it’s packaging. It’s goals are to reuse or recycle 100% of it’s aluminum cans and plastic bottles sold in the U.S.. To help facilitate this, the company reportedly put $60 billion towards recycling initiatives in 2007, which included the construction of a massive, state-of-the-art recycling complex in South Carolina. The president of Coca-Cola North America said it’s estimated that because of the recycling efforts of this plant, 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide will be prevented from entering the atmosphere over the next decade.

The products of the recycling program (besides new plastic bottles & cans) include jewelry handmade in Atlanta of glass Coke bottles and aluminum cans, shirts made from PET plastics, and even bags and clutches made from Coke’s old vinyl billboard ads. This is just one more good reason to start recycling (if you’re not already), and if you’d like to help more you can purchase some of these recycled products from Coca-Cola’s website or, um, participating retailers.